#glenlea

Warm Winter Memories! #FarmLife #TheRenewedFamily

Farming is an art. Part of the art of farming has to do with timing. For example in spring you need to gauge when you think it is warm enough to plant without that last killing frost taking out any young shoots. Then you have to balance swathing the crops, harvesting, working the fields once they are harvested and fertilizing the soil so that it will be ready for seed again in spring. Speaking of…

Christmas in Glenlea! #TheRenewedFamily

Christmas is full of traditions. In a previous post I wrote about the anticipation of that day with the season of Advent and our silly little tradition of giving small gifts in baskets before Advent Sunday breakfast, but that barely scratches the surface of Christmas traditions in our Glenlea home.

For example, as much as you might look forward to presents and family there was always the added…

Advent in Glenlea! #TheRenewedFamily #Advent

If it’s a secret – then it’s a poorly kept one; I love presents (getting them… although giving them is fun too.) I’m so grateful for Gary Chapman’s book The Five Love Languages,which I have never read but understand validates my desire to receive gifts (it’s how I receive love.) For my whole life I thought I was just a materialistic guy who refused to grow up, because apparently adults shouldn’t…

The dog who wouldn't die! #TheRenewedFamily

Life and death are all part of the farm life. Even Jesus used farming illustrations to explain the spiritual cost of being His disciple (John 12:24-25). I have very warm memories from when I was very little of Grandpa lopping the heads off of chickens and watching them run around until they flopped over, very dead. We weren’t much of a hunting family but we did have some guns to put down the odd…

How to crash everything and survive! #TheRenewedFamily

There are moments in life when everything moves into slow motion. For example, when I was 15 my dad sold a couple of our dirt bikes and got a much more utilitarian mode of farm transportation, an ATV. The quad wasn’t as fast as the dirt bike and it also felt much more stable (it was) but that didn’t mean we couldn’t find ways to crash it! I have a memory of riding the quad that stills gives me…

The Skunk's Revenge! #TheRenewedFamily

For a while Grandma and Grandpa Dick had kids all over the world. At one time Harold and Judith lived in Israel, Marv and Edith lived in Hamilton and Ted and Betty lived in Germany (they outlasted the others.) Now John and Ruth lived in Niverville, but although that made them strange, it did not result in needing to travel and visit them for days and weeks at a time.

It was always exciting then…

Grief in Glenlea - #TheRenewedFamily

William Bergman lived just a kilometer, if that, up the road from our farm in Glenlea and William Bergman’s dad built him a real tree house. Now when I say a real tree house… that is precisely what I mean. This tree house was built at tree level but on hydro poles. Hydro poles! William’s dad actually bought hydro poles, planted them in the ground and built a tree house for his son on the top. It…